OAKLAND, CA – In partnership with lead sponsor, Campbell Soup Company, and General Mills, Net Impact is excited to announce the winners of the first-ever Forward Food Competition, a program that gave participants the chance to launch a new sustainable product or service within the food and beverage category. The response was overwhelmingly positive with over 140 applicants tackling a wide range of issues in society— food waste, unsustainable farming and recidivism, to name a few. In the end, the winners were as follows:
Foodfully won first place with an app designed to both reduce global food waste and improve how people are consuming food, potentially saving individual consumers about $600 a year on their grocery bill. Users can directly scan receipts into the phone or link their Foodfully account to a shopping loyalty card. The app then tracks the estimated shelf life of each registered item, sending out an alert when something may be likely to spoil soon. Foodfully is also working on hardware that links with their software to bring greater intelligence and waste reduction into every user’s home.
"Foodfully is honored to receive this award from such the Net Impact community and their sponsors,” said Brianna McGuire, CEO and Co-founder of Foodfully. “We are devoted to creating meaningful solutions to real problems facing our food supply and food culture, and it is humbling to receive guidance and support from other organizations working to do the same."
The first runner-up was Kitchen Table, offering frozen, plant-based meal kits. The ingredients inside each kit are prepped and ready to use, promising to need less than 15 minutes of stovetop preparation. The frozen format was designed to reduce food waste, as customers can prepare the meals at any time, not risking spoilage. The company founders also guarantee more nutrition, citing studies that show frozen produce to maintain higher nutrient levels than its fresh counterparts, which they say are picked before they’re ripe and therefore have not developed their full spectrum of nutrients.
In second runner-up place was One Hop Kitchen, offering a line of sustainable products made with textured insect protein, using either mealworms or crickets. A serving of the company’s Bolognese pasta sauce contains five grams of protein per serving and saves 80 gallons of water, compared to the traditional beef option. It also contains half the saturated fat and a third of the cholesterol of standard meat-based pasta sauces. The products are gluten, dairy, soy and preservative-free but according to the founder: loaded with flavor. Participants in the blind taste test reported satisfaction with the sauce and did not suspect that it was made from insect protein.
For the Forward Food Competition, all participants submitted an original idea on how to change the food and beverage industry for the better, either through a unique product or service. An in-house team of Net Impact judges reviewed the submissions and gave feedback to each one, ultimately choosing ten finalists to proceed to the next round: uploading a two-minute pitch video. Net Impact opened the voting process on its website for 10 days, allowing members of the general public to choose their favorite team. Next, a four-person expert panel weighed in and scores from the judges and public voting were tallied to decide on the winner.
The professional judges were: Kirsten Tobey from Revolution Foods; Seth Goldman from Honest Tea; Dave Stangis from the Campbell Soup Company, and Jerry Lynch from General Mills. The judges scored entries in the following four categories: innovation, sustainability, market need and feasibility. Sample questions they asked of the submissions were: How is the idea innovative? In what ways is the product or service sustainable? Does the product fill a need in the market and is it scalable to meet market needs? Is this a practical and scalable idea?
“The Forward Food Competition is a great way to highlight the next generation of food creators defining the future of food,” said Dave Stangis, Vice President, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability at Campbell Soup Company. “Campbell Soup understands that the future of food will require an ecosystem of innovative partners who can lead change within the food system. It’s critical to have a sustainable, purpose-driven pipeline of new ideas to feed the world.”
“This competition was such a natural fit for General Mills participation. It not only hits on an area we are truly passionate about, but also spotlights extremely talented and forward-thinking entrepreneurs in the food space,” said Jerry Lynch, Chief Sustainability Officer at General Mills. “Programs like Net Impact allow us to interact with a diverse group of creators, and offers exposure to innovative ideas that could drive growth in our industry.”
The top team won three passes to Net Impact’s annual conference, to be held Nov. 3-5, 2016 in Philadelphia and a free ticket to
Expo East
this September in Baltimore. At Expo East, Foodfully will participate in the Pitch Slam, where they will pitch their app to even more food industry movers and shakers. The two runners-up won one pass each to the2016 Net Impact Conference
, which has long been a way to connect the organization’s members with one another and with potential career-makers, as well as to drive its founding mission: to mobilize the next generations to use their skills and careers to make a positive impact on the world.About Net Impact
Net Impact is a global network of aspiring change agents. We provide our members with the skills, connections, and experience they need to maximize their potential and have a lasting impact on the world. One hundred thousand strong, with 300 global chapters, our members take on social challenges, protect the environment, and orient businesses and products toward the greater good. In short, we help turn passions in a lifetime of world-changing action. Visit www.netimpact.org